For all its “Perils of Pauline” moments, the “no, Mr. President, I’m a patriot!” speeches, the amnesia, the cougars, the “bomb/virus/assassination is going to happen today,” “24” is, above all else, a rarity on television: A tragedy.
At the end of the day, it won’t be sunshine and lollipops for Jack Bauer, played with arresting intensity and melancholy by Kiefer Sutherland. If there’s a terrorist threat, America won’t come away unscathed. If you have a favorite character, chances are they’re gonna die.
And that’s what keeps fans riveted into a sixth “day,” which starts next Monday, Jan. 14. Unpredictable and unconventional, “24” is the kind of show where major characters get killed in the opening minutes of a particular day, the vice president will be a member of Al Qaeda, and Chloe – sweet, pain-in-the-butt Chloe – will get knifed in the server room. If these Top 10 moments from “24” are any clue, that’ll be just the start:
1. Don’t you forget about me . . .
Day 1: 11:58 p.m.
In one instant, the death of Jack’s wife Teri (Leslie Hope) cemented the fact that “24” was a different kind of drama. In the final minutes of the first “day,” all seemed right. Evil Serb warlord dead, traitor captured, presidential candidate safe. Yet Teri, having unwittingly uncovered the plans of the double agent Nina Myers (Sarah Clarke), was still missing. Jack searches for her frantically, only to find her dead, murdered by Nina, in one of the Counter Terrorist Unit’s computer rooms. As he cradled her in his arms, the clock ticked down – and for the first time, it was silent. It was a daring way to end the first, and perhaps only, season of the show (at the time, “24” was nearly canceled). But it gave Jack emotional resonance for the rest of the season, and made him wish he could suffer a little amnesia.
2. Ka-boom!
Day 2: 10:58 p.m.
If the hero of “24” was played by Bruce Willis, chances are the terrorist-controlled nuclear bomb of Day 2 would have defused at the last minute, the red LED numbers stopped at 0:01. But this is the tortured (and torturing) world of Kiefer, where you knew the damn thing was gonna go off. Radiation-ravaged Mason (Xander Berkeley), a lovable jerk of a CTU boss, pilots the bomb into the middle of the Mojave, saving Los Angeles, but as President David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) watches the sky light up outside Air Force One, you’re chilled by how terrifying this would be in the real world.
3. Is he in good hands?
Day 5: 7:02 a.m.
OK, you know the writers were stroking cats with evil glee over this one. Not two minutes into Day 5, after surviving the Serb assassins of Day 1, his Lady MacBeth-esque wife (Penny Johnson Jerald), a virus that scarred his hand, a coup by the military and an endless parade of crooked officials, President Palmer was shot through the neck by a sniper. No silent clock, no few minutes warm up, just a wound not even Allstate could cover. He couldn’t go down like that, can he? Hell, yes.
4. Revenge of the nerd
Day 4: 1:59 a.m.
Computer tech whiz Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub) can get you blueprints for any compromised power plant, hack into any terrorist’s laptop, even set up a communication link with a stolen stealth fighter – but she won’t be happy about doing it. The world’s most prickly IT expert’s finest moment, though, occurred when she was dispatched to the home of an evildoer who was trying to hijack a missile. An assassin trapped Chloe in an SUV, firing into the bulletproof glass and T-boning the vehicle to dislodge her. Finally, she freed an assault rifle from the backseat, got out and unloaded into the hitman’s car. Geeks everywhere found an unlikely hero.
5. Serb your enthusiasm
Day 1: 10:59 p.m.
Sure, it made no sense. If Nina Myers was really evil, why didn’t she do more to foil Jack earlier in the day? Why would she (inadvertently) tip off Teri Bauer that she was hitching a ride with a bad guy? Wouldn’t she be clued in? No matter. As she called the evil Drazens in the final moments of the second to last hour, “Yelena” (as the Serbs call her) pulls out the “24” twist to end all twists. Nina was so good she became the show’s boogie man, popping up again in Day 2 and Day 3. Her demise was squandered, but in that first minute, she was pure eeevil hotness.
6. Have you tried the Home Depot?
Day 2: 8:50 a.m.
Jack Bauer, disheveled, pissed off at the world for the death of his wife, was called back into service to track down a nuclear bomb. A convicted child molester is CTU’s only connection to the terrorists. Will Jack torture him? Do his raspy “who do you work for?” speech? Fat chance. In a perfect “I haven’t got time for this” moment, Jack shot the guy in the chest.
“24” makes you feel so dirty, doesn’t it? You loath Guantanamo, believe in the Geneva Conventions, yet you squeal with delicious shock as Jack, looking for a peace offering to the terrorists, eyed the dead body and muttered, “I’m going to need a hacksaw.”
7. Knee’d to know
Day 5: 5:56 p.m.
Just when you thought Jack couldn’t surprise you (performing electro-torture using wires from a lamp; letting his girlfriend’s ex husband die on a table), he still managed to pull out a few stops. Turns out a former CTU agent, Christopher Henderson (Peter Weller) was helping some Middle Eastern party planners. Jack went to his house and held Henderson and his wife (JoBeth Williams) at gunpoint. “I won’t talk Jack,” Henderson offered. So Jack . . . shot his wife in the leg. And even after that, RoboCop still wouldn’t talk. That marriage is going to need some serious counseling.
8. Inn-fection
Day 3: 5:53 a.m.
Let’s face it, “24” fans, the second half of Day 2 (after the bomb went off) and the first half of Day 3 (after they completely dropped the whole Palmer assassination story and spent hours kicking around in Mexico) pretty much blew. But things turned around dramatically once the deadly virus everyone was chasing was released in a Los Angeles hotel. Guests riot, Hazmat scrambled and all CTU could do was watch from the other side of a glass lobby as people started to die. In one of the series’ most touching moments, agent Michelle Dressler (Reiko Aylesworth) called her husband Tony (Carlos Bernard) from inside the hotel and begged him to hand out suicide tablets to the infected. “I’m talking about common decency,” she said. Let’s talk about being horrified.
9. Oh, snap, girlfriend!
Day 4: 10:40 a.m.
Shohreh Aghdashloo burned a hole through Day 4, playing red-hot evil Middle Eastern mama Dina Araz, the den mother of a sleeper cell terrorist family. Just to hear her hiss her son’s name, Behroooooz, would raise the hairs on our necks. But nothing beat when she told her son to kill his clueless girlfriend, Debbie, who had glimpsed the bunker where terrorists were holding the Secretary of Defense. Behrooz, of course, was too scared to use the gun, but not to worry: Dina had already poisoned the girl’s tea. As Debbie slowly asphyxiated on the carpet, Dina glided down the staircase, spitting at her son, “I am so disappointed in you.” Chills!
10. Shanghai’d!
Day 5: 6:55 a.m.
The most satisfying ending since Day 1. After Jack faked his death at the end of Day 4 to escape Chinese agents, the writers cannily kept that plot off stage for all of Day 5. But just when it seemed like things would end happily (evil president arrested, disaster averted, traitor dead), Jack was kidnapped by the Chinese (“Did you think we’d forget?”) and smuggled out of the country on a freighter. This is where we left off and we can’t wait to see what happens next.
